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Religions try to explain
tsunamis

"This is how nature works, it
is like a cycle," says Vidura, a Buddhist monk.

United
States - If talking to God
is as easy as lighting a candle, then the Lord has been mighty busy
this week, because from every corner, in every language, mourners
for the tsunami dead seem to be asking the same question: "Why,
God?"

And, as CBS News Correspondent Jim
Stewart reports, no one is getting the same answer.

In India, a leading Hindu priest explained
that the disaster was caused by "huge pent-up man-made evil
on earth" and the positions of the planets.

Israeli chief rabbi Shlomo Amar proclaimed,
"The world is being punished for wrong-doing."

But Muslims, who lost more people
than any other religion, have a different take.

The monk there explained that under
his religion, the answer is, "just because."

"This is how nature works, it
is like a cycle," says Vidura, a Buddhist monk. "From
time to time these things happen. We never know where it happens."

It has happened before. In 1755 an
earthquake set off fires that destroyed Lisbon and then tsunamis
that drowned most survivors. When the rest cried out, "Why,
God?" priests roamed the streets hanging whomever they felt
had incurred the Lord's wrath.

Episcopal bishop John Bryson Chane
of Washington believes to even ask, "Why?" implies God
is handpicking the victims.

"I don't see God as a puppeteer,"
says Rev. John Bryson Chane, an Episcopalian bishop. "God doesn't
pull strings and God doesn't choose who's going to live and who's
going to die."

So therefore, the Lord is surely present
among those who deliver comfort to the survivors, Chane argues,
but is in no way responsible for what happened.

"When plates shift on this planet,
plates shift on this planet, and that's a geologic statement,"
says Chane. "That's not a theological statement.

"Stuff happens. Stuff happens."

Only how do you explain that to the
parent of a dead child, 10,000 times over. [CBS]